Body Politics, State Power, and Resistance

Session Submission Type: Paper Session (90 minute)

Description

In recent years, struggles over bodies—reproductive, racialized, disabled, migrant, gendered—have intensified across political, legal, and cultural arenas. Whether in the regulation of reproduction and abortion, the policing of immigration, or the militarization of public space, contemporary politics is marked by the exercise of state power upon and through bodies. This session invites contributions that critically examine how the state regulates, disciplines, and surveils bodies, as well as how individuals and collectives resist and reimagine these forms of control. How do laws, executive orders, and public policies translate into forms of state violence, militarization, or health regulation? How are misinformation, medical authority, and moral discourse mobilized to shape bodily autonomy and social belonging? Possible topics include, but are not limited to: the politics of reproduction and abortion, and their role in defining citizenship and moral order; embodied activism and protest as modes of resistance to state and institutional control; the control of immigrant bodies and the lived experience of migration under regimes of surveillance and exclusion; disability, health, and biopolitical governance; militarization of borders and policing; the circulation of misinformation and its effects on bodily autonomy and public health; and social movements challenging or reworking the boundaries of state power. All methodological approaches and research sites are welcome.

Sub Unit

• Sociology of the Body and Embodiment Section / Body Politics, State Power, and Resistance

Presiders

• Virginia Kuulei Berndt, McDaniel College

• Madeleine Pape, University of Lausanne

Individual Presentations

• Bodies, space, and democratic backsliding: Everyday sporting territoriality in Hong Kong - Kylie Chiu Yee Lui, The University of Hong Kong

• Empire Becomes Intimate: Muslim Visibility, Affective Labor, and the Personal as Political after 9/11 - Asena Karipek, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• From Sidewalk to Global Feed: Women’s Video Activism and the Politics of the Body in Iran - Soodeh Mansouri, University of Illinois

• Racial Embodiment and the Interaction Order at Berlin’s Public Pools - Esra Sarioglu, University of Virginia

• The State Draws Blood: Law Enforcement Phlebotomy as a Tool of Biopolitical Power - Anne Kathleen Johnson, Washington State University Vancouver

Session Organizer

• Madeleine Pape, University of Lausanne